Mel Gibson, pictured just before he tied up his dignity, shoved it in the trunk of his car,
and drove it into the Hudson River.

Unfortunately, that means there is no bar room brawl between Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes, and instead Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper is more a battle of wits, even if this is a one-sided battle as one of the teams doesn’t even realize they are in any sort of competition. This is an adventure game, where the primary focus is solving the infamous Jack the Ripper murders with the help of one of literature’s greatest detectives (other than Harriet the Spy). Sadly, the premise here is actually the most interesting aspect of the game, and while the story might keep you entertained for portions, as a whole this is an unfortunate combination of boring and bad.

The story revolves around the murders committed by Jack the Ripper in London during the 1800s. As no real detective has been able to solve the case, the police has started using fake ones, and identifying the murderer and stopping his crime spree has become the responsibility of Sherlock Holmes. (If he fails, I assume that Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys have next dibs.) All hope pretty much rests on his shoulders, as the London police force’s strategy for solving the crime seems to be siting around and waiting for the murderer to turn himself in. While historically this case went unsolved, what with forensic investigation at the time being limited to grabbing whatever you saw at the crime scene with your bare hands and rubbing it under your armpit, the game sort of takes its best guess as to who the real culprit was, and the story unfolds from there.

Judging from his workshop, my best guest was that the murderer was actually Sherlock Holmes.

Unfortunately, the work that went into researching the Jack the Ripper mythos didn’t really translate into a particularly gripping narrative. The story moves very slowly, and instead of chasing down Jack the Ripper, large portions of the plot focus on various errands you need to run to get people to talk to you. It would be like if in Godfather every other scene showed Marlon Brando mowing the lawn or fixing the dishwasher; the game seems determined to stop any momentum the story has by jumping out in front of its path and asking you to go find the drunken uncle of some prostitute before you can get on with the actual story. While this sort of narrative inevitably wants to draw out revelation of the killer’s identity in order to preserve the mystery and suspense, Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper does it by waving car keys in front of your face and asking you to go pick up a carton of milk. Jack the Ripper is making women into human jack-o-lanterns, but there never seems to be any real urgency to the investigation. It feels more like you’re investigating Jack the Jaywalker, and the game fails to provide the sense of tension necessary to make a murder mystery worthwhile.

While the story meanders around for most of the game, asking if you want to see it pull quarters out of people’s ears whenever you start asking too much about the murders, the last hour or so is pretty OK, and the game at least does a nice job unveiling the killer when it finally comes time to do so. People who are creepily into the mythos might get a kick out of it, and if you’ve read all the books and watched all the History Channel programs and have a collection of knives (for display purposes only, of course, although small animals around the neighborhood are starting to disappear and the neighborhood children all run inside when they see your car coming down the street), then you might find the story interesting. The basic premise here is at least promising, but the actual story is butchered worse than Jack the Ripper’s victims. The entire game is just the perfect example of how not to tell a story, with things like pacing and intrigue completely absent, presumably lying dead somewhere in a gutter by Jack’s hand. The killer is revealed as soon as he is introduced as a character, making this less of a murder mystery and more of a murder hey-it’s-that-guy-over-there.

“Hi! My name is Carl and I’m the murderer you’re looking for!  …probably shouldn’t have said that last part.”

The game also wastes Watson and Holmes as characters, as they don’t really feel like the literary versions of themselves and are instead substituted by Generic Adventure Game Characters 1 and 2. It is like a couple of homeless people snuck into their closets and stole some of their clothes, so while they look like the characters, you can tell something is off once they start speaking and rummaging through your trash to collect all your leftovers. All of the characters in the game are just terribly bland, with the exception of a couple that decided to buck the trend by just being terrible. You really don’t have an attachment to any of these characters for the same reason you don’t form attachments to random people sitting with you on the bus. There are a couple of moments where they try to force some drama and backstory onto some minor characters, but it comes off all awkward and feels forced, like if someone tried to tell you the spoon you were using was suicidal because the fork had left him for a knife. There are bits and pieces of characterization every once in a while that are all right, but character development isn’t something I want sprinkled on lightly.

The actual gameplay is focused on the puzzles that you need to solve as you track down the killer. There is a wide variety here, ranging from classic sliding block puzzles to numerical locks to using documents to properly dress a mannequin. The puzzles appear rather sporadically, and sometimes it comes as a bit of a shock when one finally shows up. And not just to you—the puzzles themselves apparently haven’t been given time to doll themselves up and rehearse their lines before getting shoved out on stage and having to nervously dance around because they don’t know what they’re doing.

For example, there is one numerical lock puzzle that just stumbles into the room, vomits in the corner, and passes out in front of you, leaving the rest up to you. I had first thought that I needed to get all the numbers in the circles to equal each other, and then tried getting the numbers in ascending order. After some random guessing, it turned out what I actually wanted to do was get the numbers in descending order, something that was made evident to me only by examining the solution after I had accidentally solved it. This isn’t an example of good puzzle design, as at the very least you need to give the player some indication as to what they’re supposed to be doing. It would be like trying to teach kids how to play baseball by just handing them a glove, a ball, and a bat and then peering at them over a bush while one of them hits the others with the bat and the ball. There is another puzzle, too, that punishes the player unless he or she is a Civil War historian. For some reason I can’t imagine the overlap between gamers and Civil War aficionados to be large enough to have a puzzle specifically designed for them.

“OH YEAH? Well…well…WHAT KIND OF CAR DO YOU DRIVE? HUH? HURRRRRRRRRRK.”

Additionally, the puzzle quality itself is pretty subpar. Even when the game decided to clue me in on what it wanted me to do, the puzzles were never particularly fun, and there were only a handful that were entertaining and challenging. There were some clever ones, like one where you need to figure out a filing system through a series of notes left around an office, and another where you have to unlock a safe by matching certain symbols, but these are largely in the minority, and there are too many puzzles that don’t even require a modicum of thought. It also doesn’t feel like there are enough puzzles, as the game seems to prefer forcing you to go out on errands before letting you have any real fun.

A better title for this game would have been Sherlock Holmes vs. The Oh God Another Fetch Quest This Game Can’t Be Freaking Serious. Most of the time before the game will even let you tackle a puzzle, you’ll need to get the required paperwork to submit a request to solve the puzzle by way of three people scattered around town. Say, for example, you are confronted with a pipe puzzle where you need to redirect the flow of gas in a building so people stop suffocating and the landlord can stop stuffing their bodies down the laundry shoot and hoping people don’t ask why the hallways are getting so stinky. In most puzzle games, you would attack the problem by going into the room, fixing the pipes, and completing the puzzle. Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper decided that this isn’t enough hoops to jump through to get to the semblance of fun waiting at the end of the obstacle course. No, Holmes first needs to collect a mask that lets him get near it. But the individual who Holmes thinks has the mask actually loaned it to his brother, so you need to go talk to him, instead. But that guy is apparently a moron without fingers and dropped the mask in the snake cage, so you need to fish it out. But Sherlock Holmes, who isn’t afraid of big men with knives who do bad things to women, won’t stick his hand in the cage because it has been recently manicured, so you need to go get gloves and a hook. To open the cage. To get past the snake. To get the mask. To enter the room. TO SOLVE THE ONE STUPID PUZZLE THAT THE GAME SHOULD HAVE LET YOU SOLVE TEN MINUTES AGO. This isn’t an example I just made up off the top of my head; this is something that actually happens in the game. This is usually where I create an over-the-top example to illustrate my point, but I didn’t need to because the game had already done it for me.

After being told he needed to go back across town to talk to someone else for the fifth time,
Sherlock finally snaps.

This isn’t good gameplay. This is the game stalling the player because it knows it doesn’t have enough material otherwise. It is the equivalent of a stand-up comedian getting on stage and reading the menu for the bar he’s working at in between jokes. At best, this is a misguided attempt at some point-and-click adventure gameplay, but if it is, it has to be one of the worst executions of it I’ve seen in a game. There is one worthwhile portion at the very end of the game, but nearly all of the adventure segments prior to it involve someone telling you directly who you need to go talk to and what to get, which isn’t so much of a puzzle as it is a chore. There is nothing to solve, as the solution to all of these is “complete the errand you were just sent on and hope there isn’t another one waiting for you on the other end.” Early on in the game, after getting sent on four straight of these, Sherlock makes an offhanded comment that if this guy had another errand for you, he was going to murder Watson, which would be funny if I wasn’t exactly as bored as Holmes was by the whole experience. The developers should be proud—they’ve created a program so boring that the AI has become sentient solely to complain about how bored it is.

The other somewhat unique aspect of gameplay worth mentioning is the deduction boards that are interspersed throughout the story that need to be completed. During your investigation, you’ll acquire certain clues by investigating the crime scene, examining the body, or climbing on top of Watson and pretending to stab him while he plays along before going home and crying himself to sleep. When you find everything you need, you can deduce certain facts about the case, by looking at the information and then selecting what must be true from a group of three options. This works relatively well, but it isn’t particularly enthralling unless you are a huge fan of multiple choice tests, and if that is the case then please stay away from me at parties so I don’t have to listen about the time you had three “c” answers in a row. Some of the conclusions drawn would hold up in court about as well as a building made out of pretzels would hold up in a rain storm, and sometimes Holmes makes jumps that even Evel Knievel would scoff at. It really isn’t that much of a problem, because with only three options even if you do get stuck you can just cycle through the three until the game lets you proceed. Most of the time it is just completely mindless, and you need to figure out if the fact that a woman was beaten to a pulp indicates that the killer is a strong man, if he is a blind man, or if he is a highly educated ape that has escaped its training facility and is trying to wreck vengeance against the society that imprisoned it. It is really just a forgettable part of the gameplay, which is a shame because if executed properly it really could have worked well, considering Sherlock Holmes is the protagonist.

The visuals are a hot mess, and it looks like they just drunkenly got dressed and stumbled out of the house right before the game was to be released. The backgrounds are gray and boring, and while this fits with gloomy, rainy London, it doesn’t make it any better to look at. The characters all seem like they stepped out of a videogame time machine, as they look like they are from a game released 10 years ago and at times they take on the appearance of poorly made origami. The most disturbing character is the whale of a prostitute you encounter outside of the police station. When she makes you her proposition, do not look directly at the screen or you will go sterile. She isn’t murdered in the game, and I have to assume that is because Jack the Ripper doesn’t have access to the industrial strength pumpjack that would be necessary to puncture her layers of blubber.

That popping sound you hear is all of your sperm spontaneously dying.

It isn’t so bad that you can’t at least differentiate everything, and it doesn’t hurt the actual gameplay, so overall the problem is minimal. The voice acting is also below the average quality you see in games, which is already a pretty low standard for comparison. It is a bit bland at times, like the voice actors were falling asleep and had to be prodded by the director to get through the whole script. Dialogue is all disjointed at times, with weird pauses in between sentences. It just feels like they are just reading the lines instead of actually acting.

The game also has a variety of odd glitches. No one seems to know how to open doors, or at least they all have some sort of phobia involving doorknobs. Every time you direct a character to open a door, they run halfway across the screen, open the door with their Jedi powers by gesturing toward it, and then phase through to the room they want to get to. Sometimes selecting an item to look at will break Watson’s brain, and he’ll take off running at it like it was a new mustache trimmer. It isn’t unique to the characters you’re playing as; one time after talking to a kid, he took off running around in circles before darting offscreen. I wasn’t sure what exactly was going on, but at that point I was positive that kid was Jack the Ripper. The game is just full of these little errors, and while they don’t make the game bad or ruin it in any particularly significant way, it makes it look like this game was put together by a bunch of amateurs as practice for later games so they could iron out the kinks.

I wouldn’t say I was disappointed by Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper, but that’s only because one look at the back of the box should cause any hopes you had for the game to wither away and melt into a pool of pessimism. The premise is interesting, and there are a couple of notable puzzles, and the plot is at the very least passable. However, as a whole the game is a mess, and it’s hard to recommend this game to anyone unless they cosplay as Jack the Ripper or Sherlock Holmes, or some sort of unholy amalgamation named Sherlock the Ripper or Jack the Holmes that goes around solving crimes by stabbing people. The puzzles are not only poorly explained and overly simplistic, they are spread too thinly throughout the story, like a bald man trying to cover his entire head with his last three strands of hair. This game is not going to make a splash in the adventure game market, but it might perhaps generate a new genre where you go around doing everyone’s chores, and people can call it the “Attempt to Bore You With Videogames and Get You to Go Outside” genre. It is a shame that this game wasn’t executed better, as the premise alone was promising enough to trick me into buying it. Hopefully next time Sherlock Holmes battles a foe, it is something other than malaise.

There’s a Man Who, Positively CAN’T Do…

This is fan-service wrapped up in the false pretense of being entertainment. An unplayable mess of a pile, nothing more than a compilation of smaller games that the developer couldn’t be bothered to make into bigger games or at least somewhat polish. The tiny playable sections that punctuate Family Guy: Uncensored are not great—no, they’re not even good. This game is nothing more than poorly implemented ideas tied together by a thin piece of string I wouldn’t dare call a narrative.

I cannot be bothered to summarize the story; it would take about as much time just to run through the game on its own. After the first minigame (which happens to be the only one worth a snort), you get a Quagmire-themed stage where he is half-naked and swinging from vine to vine. So far, so giggity.

I have trouble accepting that this is the most vivid image Quagmire could think up.

All the Things That Make Us Laugh and Cry.

Less than six minutes in, we’ve had two really poor minigames dispersed by dry banter. The third minigame, which I am intentionally jumping forward to, is even more disconnected from the whole plot. Chris Griffin’s Sketch Arcade is easily one of the worst. With controls based on the iDevice’s accelerometer, how can it not be frustrating and poorly made?

After this, Stewie appears and decides he will do one of those “like the time we did this” cut-aways from the show. This particular cut-away focuses on the time he defeated his half-brother Bertram.

Robo Stewie is one of the few slightly pleasing moments.

Robo Stewie is an homage to the Mega Man X series. The controls, the enemies, their movements and patterns are all in the vein of the classic Mega Man titles, while the visuals are clearly inspired by X. This minigame also includes a rocking soundtrack alike the music from X. There is even a mid-stage boss for you to clobber, featuring another cameo from the television show.

You can’t say it isn’t trying—the game is trying my patience. Does Stewie have to move this slowly? Really?

Straight after the Mega Man stage, you get a flying level called Rocket Brian. As with Sketch Arcade, the controls are awful here. This is the worst game of the bunch. After you complete this section, you get to return to Mega Man mode for a slightly taxing boss fight, Stewie vs. Bertram.

Well, I do say, Brian. I appear to be in some manner of game.

(Un)lucky There’s a Family Guy!

Now you’re just one minigame away from beating the story mode of Family Guy: Uncensored, a woefully short “story” indeed. Peter Griffin gets into a fight with the chicken from the television show. After that, there are two cutscenes, and the game is done with.

There are extra stages to unlock for each of the minigames, but they’re just so passable that I could only bring myself to complete one more before passing the gauntlet. There are supposed to be extra games included through patches, but I don’t see them anywhere.

Uncensored used to retail for $4.99, which I believe is far too steep. Reduced to just under $1, it might sway Family Guy fans into purchasing out of ignorance. I don’t think the game is particularly worth a dollar, not even for the two vague homages to Mega Man.

This piece of shit Uncensored should have been Robo Stewie with a coat of polish applied and a bit of tinkering done to make it less offensive. Either that, or ignored altogether.

Pixel-art females your thing? You’re better off with Poker Ladies.

I hope Glu thinks again before releasing another terrible–nevermind.

Fortunately, Metal Dead did not elicit any of these responses. Somewhere out there, Vangie is right now breathing a sigh of relief.

Created by Walk Thru Walls Studios and for sale on Indievania for $5, Metal Dead is an adventure game starring two metal-heads, Malcolm and Ronnie, as they attempt to solve the mystery of a zombie infestation plaguing their city. Their search leads them to the offices of the MediGeniTech company, where they encounter a number of other, mostly sane, survivors and proceed to solve a number of puzzles in order to escape the building and (hopefully) unravel the riddle of the undead plague. The narrative combines horror and comedy elements to provide a story that is both entertaining and surprisingly poignant at times.

OK, now that we’re through the obligatory funny introduction and background information, let’s get down to brass tacks: this is the first game from a small indie studio, and it’s not half bad! Walk Thru Walls manages to capture a lot of the feel of past adventure games (e.g., Monkey Island) while creating its own distinct style; I think they’ve done a great job, especially considering it’s their first attempt. The graphics are simple hand-drawn pictures animated with Flash. While the drawings are a little crude, they serve to enhance the indie feel of the game and give it a unique look. The sound design is equally simple, consisting of little more than a MIDI soundtrack and sfx, which does a lot of work at times to simulate heavy metal. If I have one gripe with the game, it’d be that the soundtrack wasn’t a little more extensive (what can I say, I’m a sucker for good soundtracks).

The game is short; I beat it in about five hours, but those five hours were pretty enjoyable. The puzzles are taxing without being frustrating, and the game provides a rather humorous system for giving hints. Jokes ranging from corny to crude to dark fill the game, and while Metal Dead is not up to Monkey Island levels in terms of zaniness, it manages to come close (also Malcolm accidentally steps in poop at one point, heh). Most of the game’s supporting characters seem to be drawn from the stock selection of “quirky” characters you see in a lot adventure/zombie games (e.g. the crazy gun guy, the gruff cop, the stoner, etc.), but there were a few that were actually pretty inspired, including the main antagonist (although I’ll leave the details as a surprise!). Additionally, the creators of the game went the extra mile of adding humorous achievements into the game, and I had a good time searching for them and chuckling at their referential nature once I found them.

Metal Dead is not without its flaws; but when the game is considered as a whole, these flaws tend to fall away, leaving a very solid adventure gaming experience. Considering its length and price, I highly recommend trying it some afternoon when you’re looking for something laid back and fun to do. Die-hard metal and/or zombie fans should also definitely give it a look. According to Walk Thru Walls, Metal Dead is only the first in a series of metal-inspired adventure games, and after playing their initial offering I’m rather excited to see what they come up with next.

Dodge this.

From first peek, Girl’s Dodge Ball looks like Dead or Alive Xtreme. This should have been ample reason to stay as far away as possible.

One interesting feature you may notice is that Girl’s Dodge Ball simply cannot be played. This game crashes before you can even imagine doing anything, as though it were a sentient lifeform ashamed of its own quality. It crashes constantly, consistently, in the same place. User reviews that point this out seem to vaporize from the AppStore. I doubt any company would hide their failures and fiddle with the scores to make themselves look better. It would be just as easy to fix the problems…right?

On the plus side, at least Girl’s Dodge Ball has the decency to stop all by itself. Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 expects you to press the guide button and quit of your own accord.

Who is Gilr, and does he mind me using his select?

There are constant spelling and grammatical mistakes, though nothing on par with the atrocities seen in Dino Cap 2. I didn’t know that illiterate teenagers crafted games these days.

Whatever “achivements” are, they sure sound exciting. The game tries desperately to cover the spelling mistakes by having advertisements appear at the top of the screen. All of the advertisements I’ve seen might have been for games I don’t want to play, but at least you can play those games.

Well, I’ll just select which “gilr” I want to play as. You know what? Maybe “gilr” isn’t a spelling mistake. These characters certainly do not look human. There’s also only two to pick from. It isn’t possible to unlock the others; doing so requires spending virtual money.

You can earn the virtual money just by playing, but whenever I go to start the game, a remix of Chris Rea’s “On The Beach” plays and the iPod crashes back to the springboard. You can also buy the fake currency by spending real currency. If I discover that anyone has actually done this, I will forcibly remove their brains through their arsehole. It sounds really painful, but it shouldn’t be too hard to do, seeing as their  brains must already be swimming in stools to begin with.

“Funny App Game!” Try again—it’s neither funny, nor a game.

Aren’t there any nice things I can say about this game? No, not at all; there is absolutely nothing that even remotely springs to mind. While we’re talking about reasons why this game is flawed fundamentally, might I draw your attention to the title, which should be written as Girls’ not Gilr’s or Girl’s? Unless it is about one particular specific girl’s “dodgeball,” which it isn’t. The game doesn’t even function, so it could be about a magical ball for all we know.

It doesn’t matter any that the game is free to download; if it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work! I find this ironic, considering that the latest update “fixes some bugs.” And now, for the score…

But wait! I recently came into acquisition of an iPad 2. As if by a Toca’s Miracle, Girl’s Dodge Ball actually runs on that system (while in iPhone App mode). Unfortunately, it operates poorly and has a graphical error that makes it hard to read your score.

The game is surprisingly entertaining, though. Collecting the unlockables is fun, although everything can be won in about half an hour if you put your mind to it. You have to avoid multi-colored dodgeballs thrown at you by pink shiny robot ladies. The ease in which you earn virtual money destroys the whole point in spending real money anyway, which is good, because buying virtual currency is a sin.

When I play this game on the platform it was intended for, though, it crashes every time. So the score still needs to reflect this. I hate to be a spoil-sport, but I am sticking to my guns with this rating.

The original Stonekeep, in my opinion, is a masterpiece. It will always be special to me (as my original review reflected). As the years went by, rumors of a canceled sequel persisted. Stonekeep 2: Godmaker never saw the light of day. However, intriguing concept art was eventually released:

Pretty bad-ass.

The direction they were going in looked promising, so it seemed a shame that Interplay had closed up shop. Before they went bankrupt, they were responsible for a few great games, including, Fallout, Earthworm Jim, and Boogerman: A Pick and Flick Adventure.

Haters gonna hate.

In recent years, Interplay was reborn as a company and as has since revisited and re-released some of its greatest games. I was excited. I mean, this company practically defined my gaming childhood. As many of you know, the Fallout franchise has enjoyed a grand revitalization by Bethesda being given limited rights. (This has since turned into a legal nightmare.) Fallout 3 is one of  my favorite games. When I heard rumblings of a Stonekeep game for the Wii, I became very excited (like, too excited).

Epic.

With the point-and-click interface and simple movement controls, the Wii could not be a more perfect fit for this game. I figured the Interplay team would update and re-release a few of their classics to modern gamers so they could get funding to create new content. It makes sense to do this. Stonekeep would be a fairly decent game that not many from the Wii generation have played. Plus, it seems like a waste of production value to shelve such an achievement.

So I had expected this logical and predictable step. Then, all at once, it was released.

For me, the worst-case scenarios of this game’s release were it being a half-assed finished version of Stonekeep 2: Godmaker, or a poorly done regurgitation of the original Stonekeep, glitches intact. But I could never have anticipated what I got instead.

My WTF moment of the year.

I refused to believe what I was seeing. No, I’m serious. I needed to see the game in action, immediately. In a blind rage, I stormed to my Wii and downloaded it. 500 Wii points? As much as any fucking old NES game? This can’t be real.

As the game starts, I slowly begin to realize that this is not Stonekeep. It can’t be. The game looks unbelievably bad—like an early-generation Nintendo 64 game. At this point, things get a little hazy. I remember having to pick a character to play as first. The choices ranged from a boy to a girl. So many options. The next screen places you in a dungeon with three doors. The doors have different character classes on them: an elf, a dwarf, and a third thing that I didn’t even recognize. Since dwarves are a major character in the first game, I chose that door. Everything looks really terrible. This is…unforgivable. Just look at what they DID!!!  (I had to take a picture of the TV. This game deserves worse.)

Left: Stonekeep (Wii). Gay bearded Hercules?
Right: Stonekeep (PC): Bad-ass pillager.

After the crying and vomiting stopped, I realized that the only way to play this garbage is to treat it as a stand-alone game and ignore the Stonekeep title. Maybe the “cartoony” look will add to the appeal and playability? For the sake of GameCola, I attempted to give it a go. What a mistake.

After choosing my companion, I faced the ruins of Stonekeep. (And by “ruins,” I mean the actual game, and not the castle ruins.)

Here is a play-by-play:

The first thing I noticed is that the HUD is way too big. It takes up almost 1/3 of the entire screen. Am I in some kind of vehicle? It looks like a dashboard. I hate it.

As I move the character around, the controls are extremely sluggish. Constantly being in “lurking rapist” mode is frustrating and impedes any sense of urgency.

I see a few skeletons with swords coming at me now. Time to attack them.

The weapon system. Well, fuck. I see I have some kind of a sword in my poorly rendered polygon hand. How do I use it? Can I use it?

Yes, and no.

As I swing my arm in the normal Wii game fashion, nothing happens. I later learn that in order to attack, the player must hold the A button, swing, then release the A button. When I finally perform the move correctly, the delay is laughable, as I see the PlayStation 1-quality arm and sword pathetically pass by the screen much later than I swung. Why is using the sword so difficult? The sound of the sword hitting the target is beyond generic. This is how the player is meant to attack? I am speechless.

After I kill the skeletons, I go into the next room to kill more. In fact, the entire first level is practically all skeletons. Skeletons are made of bones. So the title would indicate that these are the bones of the ancestors I am killing. Why are the bones of old relatives attacking me? Why am I collecting the skulls of my family tree?  The so-called “ally” who is supposed to lend a hand randomly goes AWOL and is no help.

The remainder of my time with this game was an unpleasant affair. Every move, spell, or special action is subject to an annoyingly specific button and Wiimote gesture. For example, to heal my worthless ally, I had to hold the left digital control button, and draw a rainbow with the Wiimote. To use a speed spell, I needed to hold the A button, point my Wiimote downward, and make a stirring motion. Absolutely unresponsive fucking garbage. Luckily, the power button still worked well. Because I was about to use it.

New on Sega Saturn!

The characters all look abysmal. The level design is unforgivable. Performing just about any task in the game is damn near impossible. After “exploring” the generic dungeon and finding a shield, hammer, scrolls, and some other potions, I realized I had the gist of the game. I had no reason to continue playing. I tested the power button and it worked better than any other button in the game.

I gave the game a fair chance. I really wanted to like it. Sure, I was put off by the shitty (nonexistent) graphics. But the mechanics of the game rely on the worst kind of gimmicks: the kind that don’t work. The game is broken. But let’s be honest: Based on my previous bias towards the original Stonekeep, I would have most likely been disappointed with the game anyway. But all joking aside, I could have never guessed it could ever be this bad.

So what happened? I would argue that Interplay had very little to do with this game. It was Alpine Studios. After going to their website, it all suddenly made sense. Horrible sense. This is the newest news entry on the website:

Alpine Studios is busy working on several internal and external projects. We are currently approved for development on the PS2, GameCube, and Game Boy Advance systems.

Really? Are you fucking kidding me? So all that joking about the game being a previous generation endeavor is most likely what actually happened.

It gets worse. I found this nugget, as well:

Rather than a port, Alpine Studios is concocting a new game based on the original, with “fun, a little fear and many exciting moments to all family members who dare to seek their fortunes and rid Stonekeep´s dungeons and corridors of evil using the Wii Remote controller,” according to Alpine founder Les Pardew.

Wow, Les Pardew certainly put the “cock” in concocting. (budum chh)

I found no redeeming qualities in this “game,” w-h-a-t-s-o-e-v-e-r. Visually, it may very well have been an early PS2 game that was canceled or “reworked” as a Stonekeep Wii game later. The controls are not even clumsy. They are, without question, the worst use of peripherals I have ever encountered on a Nintendo system. They make the Wiimote feel like the Power Glove. The story is nonexistent. The enemies are generic clones with no variance between them. The sound effects and music are carelessly generic and dull. I could go on…

SO I WILL!!! I hope you read this, Interplay.

The game is such a far cry from the Stonekeep I remember that it makes me question my sanity. What went wrong? Clearly, this shouldn’t have happened. Interplay could have had this one in the bag. The game is already made! Not too many people even know it exists. Oh, and it happens to be a pretty damn good game, too. Why didn’t you just port the game over? Throw on some motion cursor controls, and call it a day. Hell, even Mad Dog McCree made the jump to Wii. Instead, you decide to WHORE OUT the name Stonekeep to some 3- bit clusterfuck of a company.

What a disaster.

This is the only logical way to end this review. Frank OUT!

Food For Thought

The best way to explain HungryMaster is to just get on with it. You play as a cute girl named Delica who usually spends her time foraging around for food. One day she stumbles across a talking cat named Saten. She signs a contract with him and, in return, is bestowed with magical powers.

What kind of contract did she sign? We may never know, but signing a contract with the Devil almost never works out in your favor. Saten’s name is based off of the word “Sate,” which means to quell your appetite, and Delica’s name is based off of the word “Delicious.” That is clever, I must admit.

Delica now has the power to turn monsters into food. She must collect this food and deliver it to houses. Again, I’m not quite sure why, because it isn’t explained properly. On the journey, there is plenty of poorly written dialogue. Most of it is about eating or drinking things. You will discover that Saten is an alcoholic, and that Delica is embarassed about her flat chest. Such is the quality of writing in Japanese games.

We’re almost in Matt Gardner territory, but it needs more bodily functions.

The game itself (besides the drawn out, poorly written dialogue) is unique. I see a lot of games on the AppStore that are focused around launching angry animals at styrofoam castles, or cutting up various types of fruit or vegetable. HungryMaster is entirely different, and therefore it deserves a mention.

You have to move Delica around the play area, searching for enemies. When you discover them, you must draw a line starting from Delica that then overlaps with the monsters. When you let go, the line turns into a magical spell and transforms the monsters into food or drink items. Depending on how long you charge your spell for, the monsters become different types of food or drink.

You need to collect these items and then make your way to one of the houses. You have to provide the amount of food that the house has requested. Either giving them just the amount that they requested, or filling your bag entirely, will reward you with a temporary health bonus.

When you have collected 20 items or more, you can convert them into a bomb attack, somehow. This destroys all enemies on screen, but they do not drop any food. To defeat the bosses in the game, you need to use the bomb attack.

That’s all you need to know. It won’t stop you from sucking, but it’s a start. All of the control schemes are horrid.

They love the laughter and they love the living.

To Top it All Off

HungryMaster is a really pretty game. The character artwork by artist Hanikura is sweet and charming, with beautiful large eyes and mellow colors. The sprite-work within the game is reminiscent of 16-bit RPGs, especially with the top-down perspective. The game screen has a subtle scanline filter applied, which gently implies the game to be a homage to traditional arcade games.

This is one of the few things that brings me back to the game.

The soundtrack is simple, and has a recurring theme. There is only one piece of music for most stages, but it doesn’t grow old. The soundtrack is free to download from the official website, and includes a song written and sung to promote the game, using the game’s recurring theme music.

There is full Game Center integration, with leaderboards and unlockable Achievements. Collecting Achievements will also unlock hidden equipment and items in HungryMaster, mainly magical spells.

What does this even mean…? I don’t know anymore.

The official website doesn’t have much faith in the game, saying that the game is full of crappy content. On the other hand, I really dig it, since it’s available for free. I recommend that you download HungryMaster right away, because you might as well do so. It’s difficult to play, but it’s worth a shot just to see if you feel it. This is a neat little jewel that you may have otherwise overlooked.

Just an extra little note: When I first downloaded HungryMaster, there was a crippling control bug. A mere day after I reported it, the bug was fixed, and the game worked as it was previously intended. That is commitment to your craft.

Growing up, back in my demo days, I had the chance to play many game demos that were, shall we say, less than mainstream. Some weren’t even “main creek.”

The Last Bounty Hunter was one such demo. It’s the last of a three-game series called Mad Dog McCree that uses rail-shooter mechanics in an FMV environment. The game has multiple pre-shot scenarios that are—pun intended—“triggered” by the player’s shooting. My distant memory of this game was of playing it on the PC, but it was released for many platforms.

One day I decided to track the game down and give it a fresh view. Searching in the most forbidden and remote reaches of the Internet (Amazon.com), I finally tracked them down. All of them. Together. For cheap. DONE!

Cue awesomeness.

Apparently the game was re-released in 2009 for the Nintendo Wii. It even has multiplayer capability (up to four cowpokes). It’s actually cool to see some of these bizarre games getting a fresh audience. (I’m still waiting for Stonekeep to get the Wii treatment.) I also just discovered that you can now get Mad Dog for iOS. A game that started on the arcade went from PC to Wii to iPhone. Odd, to say the least. But the Mad Dog games have a lot of footage and actual (limited) production value. What else were they going to do with it?

No refunds.

In the PC version, the player uses the mouse to aim and shoot. It’s pretty straightforward. But I found that clicking someone to death with a mouse makes it go by too quickly. You can’t savor all the little emotions… In their last moments, people show you who they really are.

Clumsily regurgitated Dark Knight quotes aside, I turned on my Wii, and begrudgingly ejected Skyward Sword. I started the game. I think using the Wiimote as an aiming method is much more satisfying than using the mouse. It feels pretty natural.

At this point, I am locked and loaded. My target? C-list actors. The setting? A mediocre western town. The reason?

Just fucking because.

I know, I know, I’m back on the live-action videogame kick; but I can’t help but be fascinated by them. I mean, it’s one thing to be responsible for making a poor videogame. But how many people get to say they starred in one? I’m not even talking about voice acting, 3D motion capture, or animated characters based on real people (Paul and Lizo’s testgame shall not be mentioned). These people were actually filmed at close proximity, barking out lines to the camera and shooting at it as if it were an actual person. You can’t help but feel bad for some of those actors. This was supposed to be their big chance. I wonder if any of these “actors” ever made it big.

Probably not.

For me, the entire concept of live actors in a videogame is unsettling. I’m not really sure why. Maybe it’s because these are real actors who have real families.

Let me explain. Pretend that this is your father:

In the early ’90s, as a struggling actor, he did a few low-budget endeavors. The Last Bounty Hunter was one of them. Years later, the game is used as a conversation piece in your home, and everyone gathers around the Wii and shares a good laugh over it on a regular basis. Over the years, as his health deteriorates, the novelty of interacting with your father’s character (by shooting his punk ass and watching him hilariously fall into the horse trough) slowly becomes less funny. It represents his failed dream as an actor and reminds him how young he once was. When he finally passes away 30 years from now, you will still be able to play the game and murder him, over and over. It stops being funny.

Your mother, on the other hand, who was the victim of your father’s unfaithfulness with the saloon girl from the opening video, still replays it.

Every day.

This game is a trip. It took me hours to figure out the best way to explain it, but I finally figured it out. We’re supposed to think that the game is merely about a bounty hunter killing bad guys. The truth? Three words: Cameraman goes postal. He has simply had enough. He was tired of filming B and C movies like this soon-to-be VHS piece of shit. So he snapped. He goes on a rampage and begins shooting everyone he can on the set. The sick part is that, for some reason, he filmed the whole thing with his free hand. WHY?

The producers find the film amongst the bodies and salvage the project by re-marketing it as a “game.” And while none of the above paragraph is true, I can’t help but feel comforted by that thought.

I’m going to sum up the review by going a bit western on ya. Let’s talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The good: The game is fun. I liked all the different characters and settings you get to see along the way. The fallen enemies sometimes die in funny ways (just like in real life, right?), reminding me of the many shitty movies that are so dear to my heart. (I love bad movies.) Explosions, guys falling off of horses, and other western shenanigans are all present and accounted for. The aiming is also surprisingly smooth. In fact, the port is overall well suited for the Wii. Playing a game with this level of novelty is a pretty unique experience. It’s more movie than videogame.

The bad: The biggest gripe I have about this game is the delay between you shooting your opponent, and your opponent getting shot. This is due to the game having to load the correct video of either hitting or missing your opponent. The video freezes at the worst time possible. There’s a second when you don’t know if you shot him or got shot yourself. I might have been able to deal with this quirk by itself, but it also causes the music to stop for that second. This really ruins the flow of the gameplay and almost kills the experience entirely.

There’s also a great deal of trial and error needed to beat the game. Prepare to die, a lot. Replaying the same levels over and over again is annoying, for sure. But the cutscenes you have to endure after you get shot are so damn annoying after seeing them for the 24th time in a row.

The ugly:

The actors.

Bobby plugging the “bung hole.”

I know the budget could only allow for so many “lookers,” but yikes. I didn’t know whether to save some of these women or ride them with a saddle (or both). Also, the video quality looks like old home movies. I completely understand this one. The cameras used for filming it have long been obsolete. But it isn’t the prettiest picture. Finally, the menu layout (on the Wii version) is a bit lackluster and boring.

In all, Mad Dog McCree has “drinking game” written all over it. It has its annoying glitches, but there’s also a lot of fun packed into this game for anyone willing to push past its issues. I had a blast with it. But I am not your average gamer. I find humor and novelty in the awful. This might be a game to check out if you’re a risk taker.

Like this guy.

This classic GameCola article was originally published in November 2005.

So, you’re a gamer. You’ve fought fearsome, towering, multi-headed beasts in the depths of dank dungeons. You’ve waged battle upon armies of samurai across the desolate battlefields of a war-torn nation. You’ve flown in spacecrafts at speeds you can only imagine in real life, and, to top it all off, you’ve sparred with Tiger Woods on the greens of Scotland. In short, you’ve done it all.

But I bet you’ve never practiced law.

That’s all about to change with Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, the first in a long line of comedic lawyer sims to reach Western shores.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney plays shockingly similar to Ye Olde Adventure Games. (Note from 2012 Paul: Or, Ye Modern Adventure Games, now!) There’s pointing and there’s clicking, though those are now done with the stylus rather than a mouse. You poke at objects in order to interact with them, either examining them and then trading witty banter with your partner, or noting them for future reference. You poke your way through a series of menus to do just about everything else, too, so don’t bother with Phoenix Wright if you don’t like your games heavy on the text and light on the action.

The first four levels of Phoenix Wright come to us from the original Japanese release of Gyakuten Saiban Yomigaeru Gyakuten. Capcom, however, added a fifth level to the game before bringing it here, one that makes use of the DS’s unique capabilities. While the first four levels do support poking at the screen and occasionally shouting “Objection!” into the microphone, the fifth level also allows you to test for residual blood and dust for fingerprints, using the stylus as a spray bottle and…whatever tool one uses to dust for fingerprints, respectively.

Unfortunately for some, a good chunk of this game is just prodding the continue button and watching events unfold without your participation. With this game’s art style, it seems at times that you’re watching an anime rather than playing a videogame. But when you do get to interact with the game, you’ll be hit with logic puzzles galore—some so tricky that you’ll gnaw on your stylus in frustration. (Note from 2012 Paul: Swear to God, my stylus actually is covered in bite marks.) It’s rare that you’ll be able to solve a puzzle without really thinking it through first. You’ve got to know when to raise an objection, what evidence to present, when to press the witnesses, and when to let them slide; and you can’t typically do this via trial and error (pun absolutely intended) because the judge penalizes you if you do something that he feels doesn’t make any sense.

You’ll grow to love all of the characters in Phoenix Wright. Each and every single one of them has more charm than, say, the entire cast of Mad TV. Even with names like “Dick Gumshoe” and “Sal Manella,” they don’t resort to just being stereotypes; they all have unique personalities that you’ll mourn to see go when you’ve moved on from their levels.

Also, Phoenix Wright boasts the best soundtrack of any DS game I own. It doesn’t sound like a lawyer game, or at least what one might expect a lawyer game to sound like; it sounds like a classic Capcom sidescroller if anything, and that’s a good thing. It’s unfortunate then that, since it’s a portable game, you might not get to hear Phoenix Wright’s soundtrack all that much, since you might be playing it in places where it’s not generally acceptable to blast lawyer sim tunes. (Note from 2012 Paul: This was of course before the invention of headphones.)

Speaking of the Metro, Phoenix Wright thankfully, unlike so many other DS games, does not oftentimes require you to shout at or blow on your DS. I don’t know about you, but I’m just not comfortable with yelling “Take that!” while standing in a crowded train station. The only time you need to do anything like that is in the aforementioned fifth level, where you occasionally have to blow away fingerprint dust. (Note from 2012 Paul: This proved to be a problem the last time I played the game, which was unfortunately immediately following some painful dental surgery. I just couldn’t muster the mouth-strength to blow the stupid dust away; I ended up having to hold the DS in front of a high-powered fan to advance.)

How long would you expect a lawyer sim to last? I was expecting five hours (Note from 2012 Paul: Because legal proceedings are usually so short?), and that barely got me through the second level. Look for around 15-20 hours of gameplay from this $30 title. Don’t expect to be visiting the game much after that initial play-through, though; the puzzles aren’t exactly difficult your second time around. With the challenge gone and with gameplay that isn’t “fun” in and of itself, the only reason to play this game again is either to show it to a friend, or to play it again years later when you’ve forgotten all the puzzles.

For me, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney was a killer app. I just had to buy a DS so I could play the lawyer game. If you only like videogames in which, you know, you actually do something, this title might not be for you. But if menus don’t daunt you and if the idea of shouting “Hold it!” while pressing a vile villain about his latest lie sounds totally awesome, Phoenix Wright may be your new favorite game.

This classic GameCola article was originally published in June 2008.

AD 2XX8
A YOUNG MAN MUST
FACE A GREAT TRIAL
FOR VIDEOGAMES.

THE PRESIDENT HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED BY NINJAS.

ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO RESCUE THE PRESIDENT?

Well? ARE YOU? These bad sentences were uttered to Stryker and Blade, two up-and-coming bad dudes on the streets of Anytown, USA, by some military pilot/Terminator-looking dude. If someone said that to me, I’d heed my call of duty and try to rescue the president. I mean, it must be pretty serious business if the military’s asking two random guys off the street to help rescue the president, right?

If you look a little deeper, though, they weren’t just asking Stryker and Blade—they were also asking you, the player, to rescue the President, or “Ronnie” as he’s known in the arcade version. And as of yet, I’ve never been able to. But I’ve tried…oh, how I’ve tried. I’m just not good enough…or is it that I’m not bad enough? As Homer Simpson would say: “Oh Marge, don’t you know kids today? Bad means good, and to shake your booty means to wiggle one’s butt.” It’s an uphill battle, but the reward is great: a juicy thick burger with President Ronnie himself. Reagan would be spinning in his grave over this game. Of course, he was alive when this game came out, and President, no less. Perhaps this article will convince him to run as a zombie third party in the upcoming Presidential election. …But I digress.

Known as President Ronnie in the arcades.

Once you get through the thrilling story screen, you’re out on the streets, fighting for your (and Ronnie’s) life. You’ll face sneaky ninjas and other local thugs and ruffians. Actually, that’s not true; it’s just single-colored ninja after single-colored ninja. You’re armed with your fists and your kicks…and that’s really not enough. You can power up your fist for a more powerful strike, and you have some spin-kick moves, but it just doesn’t match up to Double Dragon 2.

If you manage to make it to Level 2, you’ll be traveling on the top of a super-long tractor trailer. In the arcade version, the truck is transporting ninjas, as indicated by writing on the cab and side cars. It actually looks more like a train, with the interconnected boxcars. In the NES version, its cargo remains a mystery, as the boxcars are blank, like those windowless vans with drivers promising candy in the back. If you manage to get to the cab, though, writing on the side indicates that it’s carrying…”dudes”? Why would the ninjas be transporting boxcars filled with dudes? Are these the bodies of dudes who fell before you because they weren’t bad enough? Are these a different breed of dude who fight for the ninjas? Are we fighting ninja-dudes? Does DUDES stand for Dynamically Unified Danger Exemplified Samurai? Why would the ninjas be transporting anything? They’re ninjas; they don’t drive trucks. Hell, why did they even kidnap the President? Do they have any demands, or do they just want to punish dudes?

Cut-rate DUDES delivered right to your door.

As bad (as in good) as the story is, the game itself is actually pretty bad (as in bad). There’s so many other great beat ‘em ups to choose from; this one’s just a poor choice, given its gameplay, graphics, and sound. Although they’d never say it, Billy and Jimmy Lee, the Double Dragons, are pretty bad dudes, too. But, if you’re feeling extra patriotic and want to help out Ronnie (or you’re just hungry for some grilled cow patty), then suit up in your white ninja pants and tank top and take to the streets as a Bad Dude. I just can’t recommend it—though the awesome intro and win screens, and the impact they’ve had on the Internets, are certainly worth a note.

You’re welcome, Ronnie. Is my favorite Chief Justice, Warren Burger, coming, too?

Should have stopped at “BAD DUDES from Data East is one bad game.” What they hell are they talking about with “earnings” and “collections”? Side note: the “vs. Dragon Ninja” part was dropped in the NES port.